Do you want to have the map changed so Dust territories are given out evenly?

RjBeals wrote:Hmm... I was wondering if it would be more fair to start all the dustbowl territ's as a neutral +1. I know during map creation this was discussed about starting neutrals and unlucky drops, but I've played some games where due to a bad starting drop, players have had absolutely no chance of winning. Is this worth revisiting, or letting it stay as luck of the drop?

I personally like it as is, and hadn't ever considered the thought of it being an improvement by adding neutrals.

6266823 - Killed red in this game, cashed, got two bonus troops to Boise City. When I started deploying, I had 2 troops on Boise City. I.e. it appears that the initial -1 effect in the the Dust Bowl kicked in mid-turn. Bug?

Gengoldy wrote:Of all the games I've played, and there have been some poor sports and cursing players out there, you are by far the lowest and with the least class.

alstergren wrote:Game 6266823 - Killed red in this game, cashed, got two bonus troops to Boise City. When I started deploying, I had 2 troops on Boise City. I.e. it appears that the initial -1 effect in the the Dust Bowl kicked in mid-turn. Bug?

There's nothing in the gamelog to indicate any lost troops

PB: 2661 | He's blue...If he were green he would die | No mod would be stupid enough to do that

alstergren wrote:6266823 - Killed red in this game, cashed, got two bonus troops to Boise City. When I started deploying, I had 2 troops on Boise City. I.e. it appears that the initial -1 effect in the the Dust Bowl kicked in mid-turn. Bug?

Agree with MrBenn, reading the log, when you cashed you got 2 bonus troops to Oklahoma City, not to Boise city....

I do NOT visit this site and I'm NOT Team CC anymore.All PMs are autobinned. If you need to contact me, you should already have a way to do it without using this site.Thanks to those who helped me through the years.

alstergren wrote:6266823 - Killed red in this game, cashed, got two bonus troops to Boise City. When I started deploying, I had 2 troops on Boise City. I.e. it appears that the initial -1 effect in the the Dust Bowl kicked in mid-turn. Bug?

Agree with MrBenn, reading the log, when you cashed you got 2 bonus troops to Oklahoma City, not to Boise city....

Well, the lastest version of the xml in this thread that I can find is about 6 pages ago. There is nothing in the first post for the XML. Can one of the Foundry mods take a look at this? Give me the XML and I will work on a proposed change to make the map even. Everyone can see that the starting positions need to be changed.

chapcrap wrote:I've been trying to work on the XML for this, but I've not done it before and I'm a little slow...

Anyone who wants to offer lessons, I'm a quick learner and good worker.

Anyway...

the drop on this really needs fixed so that one person/team doesn't get all of the decaying neutrals.

The dust/decay territories should be lumped into starting positions (each terr in a different starting position). If the underlying territories are then coded as neutral starts the dust terrs will be handed out equally. However, this will change the total deployment as the remaining 24 terrs will be divided up equally among players. This will change the number of terrs each as follows:

Given how easy it is to take the dust regions off a player it doesn't seem worth capping the number that get given out, especially as it would need to be capped at 3 to have an effect, which would leave too many neutrals in the centre to start.

PB: 2661 | He's blue...If he were green he would die | No mod would be stupid enough to do that

chapcrap wrote:Can the XML be changed on this to have equal amounts of starting territories in the decaying zone?

It just makes sense. It would make games more fair and probably get more people to play the map.

Chap, since the map is a old one and I've learned that change old maps is a problem if done without ask, I would like to understand what people think about this possiblity before to apply the changes.To do that, could you please write here a detailed post with your proposal....I'll do the rest

Thanks Nobodies

I do NOT visit this site and I'm NOT Team CC anymore.All PMs are autobinned. If you need to contact me, you should already have a way to do it without using this site.Thanks to those who helped me through the years.

My proposal would be to code starting positions for the Dust terts so that they get evenly distributed. It would also be good to have them start with 2 neutrals if they are neutral instead of given to the player.

Chap, I'm not sure I'm with you on this one. While I have suffered and benefited from this "problem." I always found it to be a unique element of the map. I am not one of the people who thinks "The possibility of dropping all of Aus on Classic is WRONG and should be fixed." Uneven drops are part of the game. In this map, the decaying territs are not always disadvantageous. They are centrally located and can give you valuable information. They are also slightly more likely than other territs to be near an opponent in the decaying region. Thus they may be helpful for an easy card later in the game.

As with any drop, there are better and worse drops on any map. The good players distinguish themselves by winning the games where they have an advantage and even picking up a few games where they do not have the advantage.

That said, I would strongly recommend that if you think this is a big enough problem to go back and recode a map that began it's life 5 years ago and after 35 pages of comments is what it is today, then you should be willing to, at the minimum, go back through the last 100 or so games and calculate the win/loss ratio of the players that have more or fewer decaying regions. 100 may be too small a sample size and you might have to control for first turn advantage (larger sample size would obviate this concern). If you find that it's 60/40, then I say leave it as is. If it's 90/10, then do something about it. If it's in between, there needs to be serious discussion about how unfair is too unfair.

OK, I just went through my first 11 1v1 games (I didn't have any team games on this map). You would of course want to take a random sample of all games, but this is at least instructive.

Your independent variables should be first turn (binary- "1" if Team 1 goes first, "0" if not), Team 1/Player 1 decaying regions, Team 2/Player 2 decaying regions; and your dependent variable would be Result (binary-"1" for Team 1 winning, "0" if not. You should also include the game number as the unique identifier for each row of data.

You will then want to run a statistical analysis to see what weight each variable has. If the decaying regions are deciding too many games, you should be able to see this from the statistical results. I think you can do this kind of stuff in excel, although it would be nice if you could get someone to code something to pull this data for you.

The coding to pull the data will be far easier in 1v1 games. Rarely is it a good strategy to attack a decaying region on your first turn, if you go first. So the code would simply look at how many times "received -1 for holding XXX" appears during that first turn for each player. You could probably get all the info you need about this map based on that BUT the results would be skewed toward your desired result (I think) because it seems like the effects of an "imbalanced" drop would be amplified in a 1v1 game.

You could use the same coding in a team game, but the larger the teams, the more likely it is that after a couple of forts, it may become advantageous to hit another team's decaying region before that player has played (especially in flat rate/escalating games, where the decaying region might be the player's only/best shot at a card). Thus the code mentioned above should still serve as a decent proxy for the information that you want, but there may be some territs that get missed.

The way around this would be a little fancier coding. You would have the names of all decaying regions in a set. The code would count player 1's decaying regions at the start of his turn. If during his or any subsequent turn, a decaying region of a player who has not yet played is successfully assaulted, then a +1 is added to the count that will be derived when that assaulted player begins his turn.

If you take the step of programming this additional element, then there is no reason not to use it for the 1v1 games above, even though it won't gather you much more data.

You will really only want to look for games that have two teams/players. Unbalanced drops in multi-player/team games shouldn't really matter as much, for obvious reasons.

Finally, if this code is written in the manner that I described for teams, then this will actually be a useful foundry tool. Inputs would be map name; a user-defined critical territ set (in our case, the decaying regions) a game range (so that a mapmaker can limit results to only the period of the most recent gameplay changes); and perhaps a game-type limiter (perhaps options would be 1v1, team v team or both). The output would tell you, within the selected territories, how much the following 3 things determine results: first turn, quantity of player1's drop w/i selected territories and quantiy of player/team 2's drop w/i selected territs.

Example: I want to know whether the amount of territs dropped in Australia (or Australia and South America or Australia, South America and any immediately adjacent region) has a decisive effect on the end result. I could run this code and find out.

agentcom wrote:I am not one of the people who thinks "The possibility of dropping all of Aus on Classic is WRONG and should be fixed." Uneven drops are part of the game.

First, there is no way Classic is going to change and I wouldn't advocate it.

Second, the probability of dropping a bonus is always calculated when maps are made now. So, dropping a bonus is unlikely. This is a different situation entirely. I'm just advocating an even drop for the decaying territories. The way it is now is like someone dropping more castles than someone else in Feudal War or King's Court. It completely unbalances the games and it happens too often.

The implementation of the change does not matter to me. I don't know the coding or XML enough to make a great suggestion there. Either have everyone drop them evenly, start them all as 1 neutral or 2 neutral, or start them maybe even start them with 4. But, I like the look, style, and gameplay of this map. I just wish the drop could be made to be even so that the map would be used more.

agentcom wrote:I am not one of the people who thinks "The possibility of dropping all of Aus on Classic is WRONG and should be fixed." Uneven drops are part of the game.

First, there is no way Classic is going to change and I wouldn't advocate it.

Second, the probability of dropping a bonus is always calculated when maps are made now. So, dropping a bonus is unlikely. This is a different situation entirely. I'm just advocating an even drop for the decaying territories. The way it is now is like someone dropping more castles than someone else in Feudal War or King's Court. It completely unbalances the games and it happens too often.

The implementation of the change does not matter to me. I don't know the coding or XML enough to make a great suggestion there. Either have everyone drop them evenly, start them all as 1 neutral or 2 neutral, or start them maybe even start them with 4. But, I like the look, style, and gameplay of this map. I just wish the drop could be made to be even so that the map would be used more.

First, whether you advocate change or not, people make this complaint often. Classic is the typical example, but from time to time you hear it about other maps.

Second, I do not think this "is like someone dropping more castles than someone else in Feudal War or King's Court." That should be an almost automatic win for that player. You have taken my argument ad absurdum. Whether it "completely unbalances the games and ... happens too often." Is up for debate. That was my point. I think the onus should be on you to show this if you want to make the changes to a map that is several years old. I pointed out a relatively simple (for a programmer or someone who doesn't mind data entry) way to evaluate this.